Namur partly accidental!

I had come to Namur from Ghent, and so it involved a change of language. Actually, it seemed like a different country, and I did not then know about Belgium's constitution, so I found it difficult to understand.

When I saw Linda Kaye's journal here, I could see she had been able to see much more than I, and I thought I should only be putting an accommodation and dining entry, but on looking again, I saw that the Trésor must have moved from when she wrote her journal, and I decided to put something about getting to the Citadel as well because I have become aware of the needs of the less able.

Quick Tips:

The tourist office near the station is extremely helpful and will phone any hotel in Wallonia to try to get a room for you.

Best Way To Get Around:

See the free-form entry if you have trouble going uphill.

I chose a fairly orthodox-looking couple of hotels from a book at the Namur Tourist Office, and this, simply called Le Breughel, was the first he phoned. I was only looking to stay for one night, so cheapness had been the main criterion.

I was a bit dismayed when I had booked it to find that it was a long way out, and I plodded back to the TEC office opposite the station to get bus info. Bus 12 at 20 minutes past the hour from quay 20 at the bus station, for anyone interested - €1.10.

As recommended, I asked the driver to tell me when we arrived, and he sort of did - that is, when we arrived at the Chausée de Liège. As you might guess from the address, this runs forever, and where I was looked like a very unlikely site for a hotel. There were very few people around to ask, but one man did assure me it was only just out of sight up a turning left off the main road. Off I trudged to find that there was no turning left anywhere near that! On again past a Chinese restaurant to some office buildings, one of those soulless places where you have to ping the right number to speak to a machine. No good. I crossed the road to an immense and expensive store, and the man there had the right information.

The Breughel, like Pieter Brueghel, was no more. The proprietor was as dead as Pieter, albeit more recently!

I explained that the Tourist Office had spoken to someone there who had promised me a room. Oh yes, very possibly they still did rooms [the mind boggled a little] above the Chinese restaurant that had taken it over. They did - it was the one I had passed, proudly proclaiming itself to be "Le Jardin Du Thé," with just below - in minute writing - "Le Breughel."

Story over - was I fed up? Actually, the smell of food did not get into the comfortable en-suite room - and the nearest bus stop was only metres from the door! A perfectly acceptable place for a night at €37.00. It really does have a delightful garden backing onto the river, and even the noise of boats and trains stopped - as far as I know - in the hours of darkness.

Details of how to find this remarkable place are under the accommodation file, although an Asian restaurant (it does Thai food as well as Chinese) called Jardin Du Thé is easy to find compared to the Hotel le Breughel.

I entered in no good frame of mind, realising that I was a captive customer in practice, but I was cheered to find that there were far more people eating there than could possibly be captives from the rooms above, and as it had practically no natural catchment area, people had obviously travelled to get there.

Contrary to my fears, it was not one of those restuarants which must make the Chinese embarrassed, but a very reasonably priced place for a well-cooked, tasty meal.

Local beers (and in Belgium, who objects to that?) are very reasonably priced. It looks as though earlier in the year you could eat out in the lovely garden and watch the river traffic, which would be a real delight.

Since I cannot really add to Linda Kaye's splendid journal and this is solely to update the location of the Trésor, I may as well be precise about it. The Trésor is now the principal exhibit of the Musée des Arts Ancient du Namurois, which is located in L'Hotel de Gaillier d'Hestroy at the above address. I don't know whether it's really better for it to be in this lovely house - it really is very nice - or whether the nature of the Trésor makes it more exciting to go into the back streets as Linda did. However, the layout is fine. There are two separate buildings, and the one with the video is the one without a lift.

Fortunately, the very kind curators allowed me to watch a computer not normally available to the public in the other building. Whether the public one was multi-lingual, I don't know, but mine was in French only, so I learned less than I might have wished about the background and history.

Something that impressed me was that the small sections of the various items could be magnified very substantially on the computer without any loss of clarity at all. This is a terrific tribute to the artist who only had hand tools for his craft.

I have to urge anybody who reads this without having read Linda's first to look at hers now.

The cost is €5 adult and €3.50 for concessionaries [I think less for children].

Linda Kaye's page seems to sum it up excellently, which is as well, because I'm afraid I didn't even get there - much to my disappointment, because it really calls out from above, without any of the absurd Disney-like pinnacles which are so disappointing at Carcassonne.

This seems to be a place which can be reached easily by people who have difficulty with walking, as long as they can use the local minibus, so I thought it was worth providing the details - even though the opening and closing times ruled it out for me.

It is a get-on/get-off service which only costs €2.00 ad runs from the tourist office near the station on the hour from 10am to 5pm.

I console myself with the thought that it was almost 5pm before I could actually see the top - the weather was slow to clear. However, I was awfully tempted to go in the morning when the sun was shining, but it would have set me back three hours at least, and I had yet to enter the Ardennes.